Suicide pill legal, says Nitschke

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The euthanasia campaigner Philip Nitschke and a team of advisers have formulated a recipe for a home-made pill that they say can provide a peaceful, reliable and legal death.

Tests have begun to establish how consistently the pill - which only requires the facilities of an average kitchen - can be made from readily available ingredients such as nicotine and alcohol.

Dr Nitschke said yesterday that pressure to develop the pill had been relentless since the overturning in 1997 of the world's first voluntary euthanasia law in the Northern Territory.

"No government will be able to bring itself to ban these substances, so I think the process is safe," he said. "And if people can do it all themselves, with no help, there is no breach of the law."

Dr Nitschke said details on the manufacturing process would be restricted to Exit Australia, an organisation with about 3000 mainly elderly members committed to being able to choose when to die. "We are not about to put [instructions] up on a website or anything like that," he said.

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He said that as far he knew, no one had yet taken the pill, which he developed at home in Darwin with help from retired chemists. The pill's formula seemed "theoretically OK ... we are certainly not saying this product is the best or final one," he said.

"The emphasis has gone into making a process which is straightforward enough that any competent person with reasonable ability and an average kitchen could easily manufacture it themselves. That is not a crime [but] if I go and make it and give it to someone, I will be assisting their suicide and I will be in prison for the rest of my life."

The development of the pill is detailed in a documentary, Mademoiselle and the Doctor, that will premiere at the Sydney Film Festival this weekend.

Directed by Janine Hosking, it is based on the 2002 death in Perth of Lisette Nigot, a 79-year-old Frenchwoman. "After 80 years of a good life, I have [had] enough of it," she wrote in a suicide note pinned above her bed. "I want to stop it before it gets bad."

Dr Nitschke will attend the premiere, taking questions afterwards. He plans to visit the United States next week for the release of the documentary there.